Um, chill pill, dude

A Samoan Rugby player has tweeted about his team's treatment at the rugby cup thing. His team had only had 4 days between games, which is not enough time, but I still think it wasn't quite “like slavery, like the holocaust, like apartheid.” However there will be a job in talkback radio for this guy when he retires from rugby.

What do we want? Hilarity! When do we want it? Ensuing!

I did not see this story when it came out because the NZ Herald is a provincial Auckland newspaper. It is not quite your classic Athenian Tragedy with a hero brought down by hubris at the moment of his greatest triumph, but is still sufficiently amusing that this would be a good time to buy the movie option, according to Riddled's independent financial advisor. Then she independently advised us to pay the overdue Riddled bar-tab by the end of the month or harsh words would ensue and we'd lose our personalised beer-mugs.

The story concerns a con-man (Trevor Rogers) acting out the "Ingenious Kiwi Garage Tinkerer" role in order to swindle investors out of a coupla $million, promising them a revolutionary weaponised diesel-fueled UAV helicopter. Then the goal diversified into a range of revolutionary remote-pilotted helicopters, with cool names like Bandit, Wolverine and Alpine Wasp; no working prototypes let alone test-flights but nice mock-ups and CGI depictions of how they would look among the peaks of the Himalayas.

With investors expressing impatience, he switched to the "Doughty Kiwi Battler against Red Tape and the Media Clobbering-Machine" role, meanwhile trying to shift the company's assets overseas in search of a larger pool of mugs, and blaming officialdom for stopping him. Libertarians loved him in this part.

Held up by balloons

When UAVs go wrong

Now Rogers is playing "Defiant in the Face of the Rigid Legal Establishment". The judge believed his press releases about the valuable blueprints and specs for the unbuilt aircraft that formed most of the bankrupt company's assets, and keeps jailing him for contempt for not delivering them.

Besides Rogers himself, the cast includes:
(1) Investor Allan Crafar (whom you will recall as Mr August from the 2010 Riddled Dunning-Kruger Calendar);

(2) Main booster Irene King, Chief Executive of the Aviation Industry Association, who described Rogers as

an inspirational figure in the aviation industry, who does not seem to have the word "can't" in his vocabulary.
When he flies to the top of Everest some marketers here may have to answer why they passed up the opportunity to be involved.

Her current excuse for her erstwhile enthusiasm is that she is not an engineer.

(3) Mike Hanlon, press-release-rewriter for a technoporn journal, who managed to write the following credulous dithyramb without his colon leaping up through his mouth to strangle him to death:

Constructed mainly of Carbon Fibre and Kevlar, the Snark is light and fast (280 km/h), quiet (special rotor blades make it extremely quiet), virtually invisible to radar or infrared detetection (it recycles its exhaust gases and emits little heat) and can carry a payload of 680kg, offering the ability to pack both massive firepower (enough to sink a ship) and surveillance equipment (such as high res infrared cameras with a magnification of 7500). But wait, there’s more, and this is the clincher. The Snark is the first UAV that runs on diesel fuel, which means it can be easily integrated into any military force – current UAVs require their own special fuel supply to be transported with them whereas the entire US Army plans to run on a single one fuel - diesel. Last and probably most importantly, the Snark can stay airborne for 24 hours at a time, offering an unprecedented loiter time for a machine of this capability.

The Snark is built by New Zealand-based commercial helicopter manufacturer TGR Helicorp and seems likely to put the staunchly independent country on the armaments industry map in a big way as it offers capabilities far beyond any current VTOL UAV.

But this is a learning moment for the whole class!

(1) If Mike Hanlon can describe NZ as "staunchly independent" then he is not divorced from reality, he was never in a relationship with it, hence the stalking behaviour and the restraining orders.

(2) Members of the Aviation Industry Association should maybe think about finding a Chief Executive who does know something about engineering.

(3) If you are investing in a search for a Snark, check that the design team includes a Beaver, a Barrister and a Butcher at the very least, and that their business plan is a perfect and absolute blank.

(4) When even Bruce Shepard thinks you're a fabulist and an embarrassment to the garage-tinkerer community, it's time to move on.*

(5) There will be harsh words and tears before bedtime if I read one more jokey headline about "High-flying entrepreneur".

* This is the Bruce Shepard who claimed to have assembled his own cruise missile.

Ag.Labs. wanted

Just a quick note to say that Goat nadgering is nearly upon us and we need pickers. Applicants must strong in body and mind and not afraid of ants:

Also, if persons of good repute, such as Smut Clyde and Another Kiwi come to your town bringing employment opportunities, it is not polite, to give them the bum's rush.

The wee ponies don't like to run fast, also and too.
Come and join the happy Riddled crew!

Can't take a joke

Who can't take a joke? Airport Security that's who!
Just because some light-hearted pranksters, for a TV show with an audience well into double figures, had a guy trying to get into the "Pilots Only" area of Auckland Airport and he got refused, The Man is getting all harsh on their mellow.
The vigilant reader will remember the story from back in the day when japester people from a Newspaper got into rugby grounds during big matches, carrying fake bombs. Our medias will protect us!

Drug bombshell hits elite Kiwi athletes

The actual story reveals a disappointing lack of drug cartels air-dropping cargos of cocaine from aerial fly-overs and striking a couple of All Blacks:

The International Olympic Committee has dropped a bombshell by confirming a banned drug is included in a product that has been provided to elite Kiwi athletes via the New Zealand Academy of Sport's official sports supplements programme.

The IOC's chief nutritional scientist, British-based professor Ronald Maughan, says the product Thermotone contains a type of amphetamine which the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) identifies as a banned substance.

Note that this is only true for values of 'amphetamine' that include 'a norepinephrine analog used as a neurotransmitter by some invertebrates'. From the perspective of NZ's finest investigative journalists, 'amphetamine' and 'adrenaline' start and finish with the same letters so any difference between them is nugatory.

The background turns out to be a shonky sponsorship deal between the NZ Sports Academy (now SPARC) and the manufacturer of a useless herbal 'sports supplement'. Sports quackery is big business and in return for the Academy's endorsement and the right to stick the "NZ Elite Sports" label on their fraudulent product, the manufacturers provide $$$, plus also free samples which SPARC passes on to our elite athletes to sell to their families and friends.

"Whitewashing the Old House".
L. A. Ring (1908)

So concerns arose that the more credulous sportspeople might be consuming the stuff themselves. SPARC had previously dealt with the concerns by commissioning a whitewash reassuring report that "It's all OK, no harm can be done, for Thermotone^© contains no active ingredients". And it is true that clinical tests of octopamine have shown none of the fat-burning weight-loss properties for which Thermotone^© is marketed. Indeed, in this toxicology review, the NIH note that if anything, mice fed on the stuff gained weight (not to mention the growth of suckers and four supernumerary limbs).

In practice, the source of the octopamine in Thermotone^© is not an extract of cephalopod, nor an oil rendered down from snake tallow, but purportedly dried bitter-orange peel.* "Purportedly" because it is manufactured behind the closed doors of a pharmaceutical factory in Queensland. Not saying that the herbal-health industry lacks integrity but when the company behind Thermotone^© feels compelled to call itself "Integria",** one detects a hint of compensation for something.

Not quite sure how a Danish Realist painting ended
up on the cover of an Aldiss novel set in Norfolk

BUT it turns out that octopamine is on the list of substances banned by WAPA ANYWAY. That is, athletes foolish enough to heed the SPARC endorsement could be busted (though before that they would have to win something). Questions are being asked; neither the author of the whitewash report nor those who commissioned it are currently returning calls.

I am not entirely sure why NZ needs a state-sponsored Elite Athletes Program, given the deteriorating public health that generally goes along with emphasis on elite sports.

* As any fule kno, dried bitter-orange peel (Citrus aurantium) also features as an ingredient of Witbier. So if the Frau Doktorin queries the amount of Hoegaarden I am drinking, I will claim it as a fat-burning sports supplement. The downside is the threat of failing a blood test and being stripped of gold medals.

** Integria Healthcare used to be Thompsons, a family firm of herbalists who at least believed sincerely in their worthless products. Then they were bought out by billionaire John Todd who saw a growth opportunity; and if there's one thing Todd has never been accused of, it's excessive sincerity.

Hell-bent for leather on a moonlit night

With World Rugby Cup fever now in its florid stage, we have been celebrating at Riddled in our own contrarian way by organising a scratch team of Old Entomologist regulars and topers for a game of Real (or Royal) Rugby against the losers from the Sensitive Frog down the road.

As any fule kno, the Royal game predates today's popular sport by several hundred years. It began in 1585 when the Edicarian expeditionary force arrived at Earth with the intention of enslaving Earthlings and forcing them to manufacture the numbered arrows that are the mainstay of Edicarian technology. Disdainful of Earth's capability to resist, they sent a single ship, which touched down near the Tower of London during the disembowelling and execution of Sir Ffrancis Ffolkes for Lese majesty and excessive use of 'f's; the ship was mistaken for one of Sir Ffolkes' internal organs by the excited mob, and disabled during the subsequent brawl for its possession.

Some say that the alien visitors were actually well-intended, and that the whole contre-temps could have been avoided if every member of the population had been provided with a basic anatomical education.

Anyway, in the modern version of the game, a couple of Library Pixies fill the role of the ship's crew. They claim to enjoy it, even without furniture, and live-blog the whole experience. They really are rather strange. You will notice that they have provisioned themselves with miniature kegs of 'Malone' and 'Malloy', two of our Celebratory Beckett Beers (the Godot is still in the maturation tank), and an air-freshening unit at lower right to cope with the subsequent farting.

The rules of Real Rugby do tend to go on a bit...

... so here's the Flanker rule explained graphically, with the ever-helpful Figures 2a and 2b:


I hope that makes everything clear.

More important news for mikey

"Who wants a nip of the Sheep Dip whisky?" asked Another Kiwi, rather foolishly some would say.

"I could certainly cope with a wee'd ram", says I.

A year ago we touched upon Antarctic whisky, and the research program to reverse-engineer its components, certainly no-one hoping that it contains Shuggoth DNA. There are developments:

In Feb 2011, after required negotiations, Whyte & Mackay company owner Dr Vijay Mallya personally flew to Christchurch to collect and take three bottles back to Scotland using his private jet. Whyte & Mackay’s master blender Richard Paterson and his expert team spent eight weeks deconstructing, analysing and marrying malt whiskies to "recreate" the ancient samples. They needed to match the delicacy, sweetness, fragrance, spice and smokey notes of the "Rare Old Highland Malt". For this they have used malt whiskies ranging from 8 to 30 years of age. The Whyte and Mackay malt brands include Dalmore, Jura and Highland Park. It would be expected that these may form part of the recreation but at it's core is malt whisky from Glen Mhor, which was the original Mackinlay distillery before it closed in 1983.

Whisky Magazine man Dave Broom is claimed to be the only other person in the world to have tasted both the original and the recreation. Whyte & Mackay’s website quotes him as "The Shackleton whisky is not what I expected at all, and not what anyone would have expected. It’s so light, so fresh, so delicate and still in one piece – it’s a gorgeous whisky. I think the replication is absolutely bang on."

So where can you taste the stuff? It turns out not to be so difficult if you live in upsy-downy land.

If the consumers undergo massive ontogenic transformations (resulting from the unmasking of hitherto-methylated HOX genes) and transform into a body-plan with novel sense organs and five-fold-symmetry, we will have to conclude that there was some DNA contamination after all.